Monday, 31 December 2012

This is the fifth year I've had to string together superlatives describing the growth of the poll both in record numbers of entrants and numbers of votes. Thanks to all 5,123 of you who voted on the 283 games below.

Monday, 24 December 2012

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

I would like to sincerely apologise to DarkGod for the wording of the previous post which implied he was somehow cheating or hacking the poll. The post and follow up comments were poorly written and far too ambiguous and I should have been much more explicit about what was actually happening and what outcome I wanted.

From next year, the poll will include the following wording: 'Promotion of this poll from within a game itself is strongly discouraged and will be sanctioned if discovered. This includes using any kind of MotD or in game chat functionality which may already exist in the game.'

The reason I am making this change is I don't want anyone to start down the trail of 'I need to add feature X to the game to promote my chances of doing well in the poll'. There's no evidence that this is actually happening - and I would be surprised if it did - but I would hate for even one developer to make one decision which was based on this kind of reasoning.

You are completely free to promote your game outside the game itself - that's what forums, twitter, Facebook etc. are based on. Note the key difference between inside and outside the game, is that promotion outside the game can be done by anyone - the developer themselves are not the gatekeepers for this process. Whereas coding and/or code check-in and review are drains on developer time, and I don't want to end up being responsible for taking time away from working on the parts of the game which you feel are important.

Sunday, 16 December 2012

283 roguelikes have qualified this year: this is again a record year on year number and 98 more than last year.

How did the games qualify?

The list was taken from the roguelike releases announced on the Rogue Basin news section between December 13th 2011 and December 15th 2012 and from the list of Actively Developing Roguelikes maintained by Michał Bieliński, plus other sources as discussed on a thread on Rogue Temple. Notably, despite the discussion period, several games were missed from the list - hopefully I've picked up everything.

What about 'x'? Why isn't it on the list?

Make sure you announced your roguelike on Rogue Basin for next year.

What about 'y'? Why is it on the list?

As roguelikes become more popular, the term is used to increasingly describe a broader type of game. This list has expanded to embrace that idea, but mostly to ensure that we don't miss any actual roguelikes. With this many entries, I'd rather be inclusive rather than exclusive, as I cannot possibly play every entry. You are free to not vote for a game if you don't consider it a roguelike.

What's the prize?
Pride. And a sexy logo - if you want one. You can see the winning 2007 logo on the Dwarf Fortress links page. Other winners are free to request them, but haven't done so. Logo designs for this year are welcome.

Having a competition is a dumb idea/offensive/stupid when you can't police the results.

Yep. Doesn't stop it being fun. You can vote for multiple different
roguelikes. The idea here is that you will be encouraged to go out and
download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that
there is any kind of real competition element involved.

Sunday, 9 December 2012

This year has seen a significant shift in the way I approach games: I've become incredibly time poor - reflected in the catastrophic drop in output on this blog which now resembles a long form twitter account (A thing I have now started doing). That I managed to be a regular panellist on a podcast and release UnBrogue this year is merely a
reflection of my time poverty: you always make time for things you
love.

A conventional approach to a middle aged gamer with more money than time would be to sink that time into sampling a wide range of blockbuster games. I'm more fortunate in that I have a non-gaming partner to whom I have to justify my entertainment expenses: so my approach has been to set a threshold (around USD$20) at which I wait like a tunnel spider, waiting to pounce on games I want. Intriguingly, this means that my blockbuster experience has been firmly rooted in 2011: with play time spent with the Witcher 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and RAGE.*

Having only an arm's length perspective on much of the critical and mainstream game's writing this year has made me realise there's no journalistic or critical voice which represents me as a gamer any more. Partially this is a moving on of voices who spoke strongly to me (Kieron Gillen, Quintin Smith), and I'm waiting for some other voices to mature (Adam Smith, Jon Schafer) and hopefully not in the way that loses their individual flavour (I'm thinking here of Rob Zacny who's professional writing is somehow weirdly disconnected from the personality he brings to the fore in his podcasting and twitter account).

But I think it is also a reflection on the way that writing about games, especially games journalism, is wrapped up in a weird mix of neophilia and nostalgia, and the games I'm playing are too old or too odd to have any hype surrounding them, but too new to be seen through rose tinted shades. So when it comes to the blockbusters, I stopped playing the Witcher 2 as soon as I finished the prologue - a ridiculous combination of wildly uneven pacing and reaching my encumbrance limit 10 feet away from the first shop I found: there are better games for inventorytris. I uninstalled Deus Ex: HR far too late in the game: for a game mostly about hiding behind office desks, Metal Gear Solid 2 did it better ten years earlier and at least had the decency to ensure the desks were on a nuclear armed oil silo. And RAGE was somewhat inspirational during it's tense shooting set pieces: until I played Teleglitch. While I could not distinguish the quality of tension imparted to my viscera by both games, I could clearly tell the quality of writing apart (Teleglitch was far superior).

Games journalists seem to write about year old games only when the game releases a new patch or mod, and then primarily in the mode 'Hey here's a thing I can't be bothered playing: is it any good?'. Games critics seem to be focused on games amenable to critical 'analysis' whatever that means, and refusal to impart qualitative assessments. I want to know strictly about the middlebrow: games that need to be rescued from B obscurity: like Homefront, but not already in the process of redemption (Spec Ops: The Line). I've written about some already: Dark Messiah: Might and Magic, Clive Barker's Jericho, E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, Crysis; but also AAA games that have no clothes, like Deus Ex: HR, Portal 2 and Bioshock, and how, though the latter is an objectively terrible game, it redeems itself with its sly commentary on the rapacious looting RPG mechanic. I'm thinking specifically of why Borderlands is one of the greatest games ever, and Borderlands 2 is terrible.

In short, why is there no Mystery Science Theatre equivalent to Old Man Murray, or Game Intestine, but written in the mode of the guy at the video store who'll recommend you and your girlfriend watch Kids?

And if there is, why don't I know about it?

[*] At the under $20 range, pretty much anything goes and I've gorged
myself on Steam sales, indie releases, iPad nostalgia and DLC throughout
the year. But I've not dangled my legs in the F2P water: when you're
time poor this is not a cheap thing to do, and I've stepped away from my
biggest gaming addiction to date: I've stopped losing myself in Team
Fortress 2 for an evening or more a week.